To Sleep Perchance to Dream
by DiscordantDream
Summary: Marcus is dreaming, and sometimes the memories of childhood are more frightning than all the Dark Lords in the world.


Author: DiscordantDream  
  
Rateing: R  
  
Warnings: Graphic language and vivid depictions of child abuse and neglect. ~Pre-Slash~  
  
Summary: Sometimes memories of ones childhood can haunt far longer than memories of a war, as Marcus Flint finds out in this past tense Vignette. ~ I'm using a version of Marcus used in a GJ role-play, my own character. If you wish to read more about him go to ~  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters depicted herein, if I did I would not be sitting in front of a computer playing in someone else's sandbox. I would be on a beach in Tahiti sipping Mai Tai's and flirting shamelessly with my poolboy.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`  
  
Marcus was dreaming, sprawled out on his back in the wide soft expanse of his bed, the blankets and sheet tangled around his legs and thighs, one arm thrown up over his eyes as if even in sleep he was trying to hide from something or someone. His lips moved in his sleep but for once he wasn't talking out loud. If Colin had been there he would have appreciated the rare silence, if he hadn't known Marcus so well that is; Marcus never slept silently unless something truly was wrong or bothered him, Marcus's nightmares were always on his Silent nights.  
  
***** Marcus's Dream*****  
  
It wasn't a dream so much as it was a memory, a memory of a time and place he'd much rather have forgotten. Marcus was sitting hunched over on a dirty stoop in a long row of brick buildings, tenements in the Low- Income Wizarding residence section of lower London known as Hollybrooke. He was a large raggedly dressed and dirty looking boy with a mean feral look in his sullen gray eyes, his dark hair fell to his jaw in greasy looking strands that might have been wavy had they not been so dirty and he seemed to have a permanent sneer on his lips. His gray eyes were far too hard for a boy his age, and he sat curled up with his back guarded as if he expected an attack from any direction, which he actually did. He looked like a half grown puppy that someone had mistreated until it had gotten so mean that even kindness was looked on with suspicion and distrust, most times rewarded with a sharp bite.  
  
He was Big for a 10 year old almost in defiance of his physical condition, as if his body refused to use malnutrition as an excuse not to live up to it's full potential. It wasn't that there wasn't food at home to eat; it wasn't as if his mother didn't have dinner on the table every mealtime. It was simply that he didn't want to risk going home to eat no matter how badly his stomach ached from hunger, not when the price of food was broken bones or painful burns that took far too long to heal. He'd scavenge later, rooting in people's trash bins; he'd go to muggle London for that though. The pickings were far better and he'd discovered that he could stomach food that would make most people sick to eat, it wasn't a treat of course but he could eat it and not feel any ill effects.  
  
Some children would have made friends in the neighborhood, perhaps eaten at their playmates houses or spending time there, instead of out in the cold. But not Marcus, Marcus didn't *have* Friends. It wasn't really that he hadn't wanted them it was simply that most parents didn't want their children associating with him, though he didn't quite understand why at first. Those parents that didn't mind had children he wouldn't have wanted to associate with anyway and were really no better than his own family. So Marcus sat alone on his stoop, hunched over against the September chill, wishing that he'd thought to layer his ratty jumpers before he's left the house two days earlier, but it had been warmer then and he'd not anticipated the recent cold snap. He sat there shivering and wondering if his ribs were ever going to stop hurting. He wasn't hunched over to look mean or threatening.he was hunched over because it left less of him vulnerable to the wind and because it *hurt* to sit up straight.  
  
What the world saw when they looked at Marcus was far different from the reality, they saw an overlarge brute of a boy with cold, snakeish gray eyes and a junkyard mean disposition. They saw the burden that the poor Flints had to bear in Marcus, who obviously acted as he did out of his own stubborn nature and bad temper. Bad breeding they called it, Blood will tell they said. It surprised no one that Marcus was more like an animal than a child, Just looking at him you had to look twice to decide if he was human or not, with his craggy face and snarled teeth. His size and strength as well as his temper, the way he startled at sudden noises and the way he smelled. He was dirty and rude and everyone pitied the quiet and shy Mrs. Flint for being forced to raise such a ..burdensome and troubled child. They lauded Brutus Flint for working to care for the boy though he wasn't his own flesh and blood son and was actually his dead brothers (Who they'd all known from the beginning would come to no good end anyway.) and bought him rounds at the pub when he complained of how " Difficult" Marcus was. It was no wonder that poor Brutus was a bit snarly sometimes! Look what he had to deal with when he went home.  
  
None of them saw the beatings handed out to Marcus when he dared show himself in the Flint home after his long absences, creeping in filthy and cold for a shower and a quick nap ( maybe a bite to eat if he was lucky and quiet enough ) before leaving again. They never saw Brutus Flint taking the strap to Marcus until he couldn't raise his arm anymore and Marcus's flesh was split open and bleeding. They never heard Marcus scream or beg because he never ever did, he saved his hate and pain and packed it all away to keep him going when he just wanted to lay down in an ally and die, when the nights were cold and dark and frightening and all he had was his hate and animal desperation to survive to keep him warm. None of them heard the things that Brutus said to Marcus or listened to his Mothers soft sobs in the night after Brutus was asleep and she wept for the life she'd brought her son to and for the person he was becoming. She wept for her own inability to do more than stand behind Brutus, fear for her own safety overriding her will to protect her son.  
  
No one saw these things but Marcus and his Family, and Marcus would never admit to being weak enough to be abused by anyone. Weakness meant death and he knew that with every bone in his body, and it was a lesson that would last a lifetime, so that even in the midst of a nightmare the adult Marcus would become made no sound, no matter the pain of the memory. So the dirty boy sat on his stoop and watched the sky, wishing in the small part of his mind that was still childlike that he could fly away from the dirty stoop, from the heavy hands that hurt him and the cold of the fall wind, from the razor sharp cut of his Fathers words and the cold burn of his mothers indifference. He didn't know that soon, in the next year as a matter of fact. He'd receive his Hogwarts acceptance letter. He didn't know that one-day he really would be able to fly away. All that Marcus knew at the moment was that he was cold, hungry and dirty and that he hurt. He knew he'd have to go home sometime in the next day or so, simply because he could no longer stand to smell himself and the water from peoples lawn hoses was too cold for washing off now and he couldn't go to classes smelling *this* bad. This was his reality, not a far off world of fairytales where there was food all the time and no one hit you simply for breathing or to try and get some sign of weakness out of you.  
  
No one saw that, ..they saw a dirty sullen boy slouching off into the evening gloom to do some sort of mischief no doubt, after all.Blood would tell. Brutus always said Blood would tell, especially when it came to Marcus.  
  
Blood would tell.  
  
Blood would tell..  
  
Blood would tell.  
  
" Filthy little beast.no better than a fucking animal. Thank Janus Gaius is dead so that he doesn't have to see what a waste of flesh his son is. "  
  
" Should have drowned you at birth like the rabid animal you are Boy, .should have just left you out in the cold, if I'd known what a stupid little cunt you were going to be I'd have smothered you myself."  
  
" Nothing more than a gods bedamned animal, look at you, filthy and smelling like a fucking sewer! Blood does tell .I suppose every family has a throwback, at least I can deny it was my cock that ploughed your whore of a mothers cunny t'beget you, you filthy little wretch. "  
  
" Blood always tells Boy."  
  
*******End Dream*******  
  
Marcus woke with a jerk, sitting up and dragging in heavy lungfuls of air, his fingers fisted in the bed sheets and Brutus Flint's voice ringing hollowly cruel in his ears. He had his teeth bared in self-derisive anger, shame curdled into a hard knot deep in his belly. He was not an animal, Zabini and those like him were the animals, not him.. no matter what anyone said. He was not an animal.Brutus was wrong and always had been wrong. He reassured himself that blood had nothing to do with anything once more before laying back down and beating his pillow into reluctant submission and going back to sleep. This time deep and dreamless, if it was one thing Marcus was good at it was saving the pain for later, but it wouldn't be Marcus that hurt for his pain..it would be someone else doing the screaming. 


End file.
